Oct 2, 2014

Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

[The] stimulating action of society is not felt in exceptional
circumstances alone. There is virtually no instant of our lives in which a
certain rush of energy fails to come to us from outside ourselves. In all kinds
of acts that express the understanding, esteem, and affection of his neighbor,
there is a lift that the man who does his duty feels, usually without being
aware of it. But that lift sustains him; the feeling society has for him
uplifts the feeling he has for himself. Because he is in moral harmony with his
neighbor, he gains new confidence, courage, and boldness in action – quite like
the man of faith who believes he feels the eyes of his god turned benevolently
toward him. Thus is produced what amounts to a perpetual uplift of our moral
being. (Durkheim [1912] 1995: 213)

Why we need
to read and interpret (again) Durkheim? Because here we can find the gist of
the sociological discourse, as Jeffrey Alexander incipit states…

On one thing most of Durkheim’s readers, past and present, have always
agreed: he, like Marx, emphasizes social structure. Durkheim helped to create classical
sociology because he located social forces “outside” the individual actor. But
from this point on, theoretical agreement ends. The problem for Durkheim and
his interpreters, just as for Marx and his interlocutors, is what does
structure mean? How does structure hold individuals within its limits? Of what
are these limits composed? If structure exists, somehow, outside of

the individual, can it
act only in opposition to freedom?

The problematics of Durkheim interpretation, then, are precisely the
ones around which Marxist inquiry has always revolved. The fundamental question
has been how Durkheim stipulates the relation between structured and free
action. People keep reading Durkheim, and arguing about him, to find out
whether the determinateness of social structures must involve the sacrifice of
autonomy and, conversely, whether insisting on human agency entails denying
external control. How generations have understood Durkheim – and answered these
theoretical questions through such interpretive understanding – has fundamentally
shaped the pattern of sociological discourse. Debates over the meaning and path
of Durkheim’s work are, inevitably, arguments about the most basic directions
of sociological explanation and more general social thought.

Is there a fundamental conflict between Durkheimian and more materialist
forms of sociology, whether Marxist, Weberian, organizational, or behaviorist?
Many have contended there is not, and they have found not only occasional
passages but large sections of Durkheim’s work to prove it. The present essay
will engage in a meticulous reconstruction of Durkheim’s theoretical
development, from his earliest writings to his maturity. This hermeneutic
effort will demonstrate that these interpreters are mistaken. We will see that
Durkheim reached his theoretical maturity after a prolonged, if confused,
flirtation with materialist forms of structural theory, and eventually a fierce
struggle against them.

- Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2005. "The inner development of Durkheim’s sociological theory: From early writings to maturity." The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim: 136-59.

Whoever wants to have a comprehensive and meticulous understanding of Durkheim’s thought should read the whole book:

-Ethics and the
Sociology of Morals. Translated and with an introduction by Robert T.
Hall. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1993.

-Evolution of Educational Thought: Lectures on the
Formation and Development of Secondary Education in France. Translated by
Peter Collins. Boston, MA:Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977.

-Incest: The Nature
and Origin of the Taboo. Translated and with an introduction by Edward
Sagarin. Together with “The Origins and the Development of the Incest Taboo” by
Albert Ellis. New York: L. Stuart, 1963.

-Montesquieu and
Rousseau: Forerunners of Sociology. Foreword by Henri Peyre. With “Durkheim,
Montesquieu, and Rousseau,” by Georges Davy and “Note,” by A. Cuvillier. Translated
by Ralph Manheim. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1960.

-Moral Education: A Study in the Theory and Application
of the Sociology of Education. Foreword by Paul Fauconnet. Translated by
Everett K.Wilson and HermanSchnurer. Edited and with a new introduction
by Everett K. Wilson. New York:Free Press, [1961] 1973.

-Pragmatism and
Sociology. Translated by J. C. Whitehouse. Edited and with an introduction by
John B. Allcock and a preface by A. Cuvillier. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1983.

-Readings from Émile Durkheim. Edited by Kenneth
Thompson with new translations by Margaret A. Thompson. New York: Tavistock
Publications, 1985.

-Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method. Edited and with
an introduction by Steven Lukes. Translated by W. D. Halls. London: Macmillan
Press, 1982.

-Rules of Sociological Method. New York: Free Press, 1966.

-Socialism and
Saint-Simon. Edited and with an introduction by Alvin W. Gouldner. Translated by
Charlotte Sattler from the version originally edited by Marcel Mauss. Yellow
Springs, OH: Antioch Press, 1958.